them with comparative and analogical material of the first importance.10
We shall keep on the trail of a very definite clue if we attempt to descry in such evidences as we possess of archaic Mexican faith the signs of an incipient rain-cult, having its origin in a settled agricultural existence. If we glance at the general characteristics of the numerous members of the Mexican pantheon, we find that very readily and quite naturally they group themselves into three great classes: (a) creative deities, which may be regarded as the outcome of late theological speculation, and which may, accordingly, be passed over in this place; (b) gods of growth; and (c) gods developed from specific objects and deified heavenly bodies, some of which latter were developed from gods of the chase. The “original” deities of Mexico would seem, therefore, to have presided over vegetable growth and conferred on their votaries good luck in the hunt. But as time passed, these latter also took on the attributes of gods of the cereal and vegetable food-supply, and, indeed, often seriously contested the status of the true growth-gods in the elaborate nature of the symbolic vegetal ceremonial with which their festivals were celebrated.